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Simple Ghost question. Anyone that uses Ghost please respond.

E

eno

Senior member
First Back up ever with Ghost.

I have a 120gb WD partitioned into 80gb/31gb.

Now I have everything program/OS wise installed on first partition and have MP3,Maps,Videos,Media,Downloaded files stored on the 31gb partition.

Its a fresh install of Windows2000 and just added added some files to the 2nd partition since I thought it would only ghost the first partition.

So I started the back up process that took a hour or so, used 6 CdR's and I noticed it copied even my storage info from the 2nd partition.

Question is this:

Since I partitioned the drive, what will I have to do to the drive in the future to get this image to install properly? Can I just format it as whole 120gb then let the 6 discs do the rest? Will it make 2 partitions automatically? Or if I just format the drive with no partitions and Ghost it back, it will only write all info to one partition?

Does that make sense? I just want to know since the image was taken from 2 partitions will I need to format(in future restore) the drive the exact same way or what will I have to do to get my 120 the same way. Its kinda hard to explain but I hope I got my point across.
 
You don't have to do anything. If you backed it up correctly, your two partitions will be restored to the way it was when you backed it up.

I believe you did a drive image instead of a partition image, that's why both of your partitions are backed up.
 
So if I formatted the whole drive as one partition , the back up discs would bring it back to 2 partitions? Or how would I have to leave my hard drive to allow a proper restore with these back up discs?
 
Yes, the backup discs will bring your hard disk back to the way it was when you backed it up.
 


I give you the advice that I learned o so very very painfully:

Do an integrity check on the image before you go and format anything. O the suckage!!

To answer your original question: you can shuffle around partitions and sizes from within ghost just before you start the reimage. You can even restore a partition to one of a different size provided there's enough room to store the data.
 
Smilin makes a VERY good point!!!

Learned the hard way myself. Drove me right into the hands of DriveImage.

But to answer the question yet again, if you do a "drive image", no matter what you do to the drive, restoring will bring it back to the way it was when you backed it up... that is if you did an integrity check!
 
I tend to do partition images only. Never run into integrity problems, but I use small (windows only) partition to back up. Backing up and entire drive on like 7-13 cd's is just crazy. Now with winXP you shouldnt need to really use ghost with the system restore. Then again I guess it depends on what you are trying to do.
 
Turkey -
Then you are backing up for the situation that Windows becomes corrupt in some way. If your drive fails you are lost.
 
I use partition images saved to a 2nd HD.
(has a FAT partition)

I can backup a 30gig drive in about 15 minutes this way.
 
For the paranoid - external backup in a fireproof safe

For the cautious users - backup to an extra HD

For the budget users - backup to CDs

For the temp. purpose - backup to a separate partition
 
Originally posted by: Bglad
Turkey -
Then you are backing up for the situation that Windows becomes corrupt in some way. If your drive fails you are lost.
Click to expand...

Exactly what I was thinking when I read that. Imaging programs should be something everyone uses. Of course this is not at all the case. 😛
 
I have an old Cyrix 233 box with a couple of old 20GB hard drives on it. I back up the four other machines on my network using Ghost with TCP/IP. I have a single network storage drive that I don't back up this way because it would be too large, but all other drives are imaged this way. Typically an entire backup image for a single machine is 4-10GB, so I have room for about two full backups of each machine. Storing 20+GB worth of images on CDR would not only require 30 CDs, but would also require a lot of CD swapping and time.

I just wanted to mention this as an alternative to backing up to CD. If you have old hardware that's not good for much any more, it is sufficient to serve as a network backup device. Just get yourself a pretty inexpensive HD and you're good to go.
 
Originally posted by: kt
You don't have to do anything. If you backed it up correctly, your two partitions will be restored to the way it was when you backed it up.

I believe you did a drive image instead of a partition image, that's why both of your partitions are backed up.
Click to expand...

You make a very good point!

I personally only use "partition to image". Easier to restore if I change the hard drive. By the way, if using winXP or 2000 and making the backup as "partition to image" I recommend using the switch -fdsz (clear signature bytes). Not a problem replacing hard drives and restoring partitions 🙂

Alex
 
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